Regardless, Americans are buying — and discarding — clothes more quickly these days.

Each one throws an average of 54 pounds of clothes and shoes into the trash annually — a
combined 9 million tons of shoes, jackets and other wearables sent into the waste stream each year,
according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Traditionally, the options for dealing with such waste have started with an “r”:
reduce,
reuse or
recycle.

Some designers, however, are going in a different direction: coming up with biodegradable
clothing and accessories — or, at the least, items with parts capable of decomposing into natural
substances.

The movement remains in its infancy, but the development stands out in an industry increasingly
scrutinized for wastefulness.

During the summer, Gucci began selling sunglasses and footwear made with biodegradable
plastics.This fall, Stella McCartney introduced several styles of heels with mock-croc and
faux-leather uppers anchored with chunky, biodegradable rubber soles. And Puma says it will soon
produce a new line of T-shirts and sneakers that can be ripped up and buried in the ground as
fertilizer.

“Everyone is beginning to appreciate the need to reduce fashion’s impact on the environment,”
said Alex McIntosh, business and research manager for the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the
London College of Fashion.

“Compostability is part of a wider waste-management agenda” that is likely to grow in coming
years, even if its use is only beginning in the $774 billion global apparel-manufacturing
business.

It is unlikely, of course, that anyone who invests $500 in a pair of designer shoes or glasses
would throw them in the trash and even less likely that such a rarefied buyer would toss a luxury
item onto a compost pile.

Still, “It’s great that high-end designers are exploring these ideas, as their influence has an
impact on the collective psyche of the design community,” McIntosh said.

That is certainly the case with McCartney, the vegetarian designer whose shunning of fur and
leather created more acceptance of synthetic alternatives in high fashion. McCartney is often
credited with turning faux furs and leather handbags into a fashion “do” when such materials had
long been considered too down-market.

Designers such as Calvin Klein and Michael Kors regularly work imitation furs into their
designs. And the idea has trickled down to mass retailers such as H&M and Forever 21, where
most of the “leather” goods are “pleather.”

McCartney’s partially biodegradable pumps, which feature 4-inch heels and thick white soles
reminiscent of gym sneakers, went on sale last month. Only the soles, made from plant-derived
plastic, are biodegradable. But their inclusion reflects McCartney’s philosophy that “doing a
little something is really a lot better than doing a lot of nothing.”

Gucci began incorporating more castor-oil-seed plastic into its sunglasses in 2011. This year,
the company introduced sunglasses made with biodegradable frames and ballerina flats and sneakers
of plant-derived bioplastic.

Like McCartney’s pumps, though, Gucci’s Liquid Wood sunglasses and California Green sneakers
aren’t entirely biodegradable. They’re made from a mix of materials. Only the soles of the low- and
high-top men’s sneakers are made from plant-based plastics that decompose over time without leaving
chemicals or other harmful substances behind. As for the sunglasses, the frames are made from wood
fiber and natural wax. The metal joints are constructed with recycled metal, which points to the
difficulties of making items that will entirely decompose: Only 100 percent natural fashions, such
as cotton T-shirts stitched with cotton thread, can completely break down in combination with heat,
moisture and time.

Not everything can be made so simply; indeed, consumers have come to expect certain performance
levels from sophisticated fabrics, such as cotton-spandex blends.

“With textiles, you get monstrous hybrids,” said Susanna Schick, owner of Sustainable Fashion
Los Angeles, an environmental consulting firm. “Having spandex in something makes it much easier to
wear, but if you put spandex in cotton, it’s a petroleum-based fiber with an organic fiber, so the
cotton will decompose but the spandex won’t. It’s a difficult situation.”

And it isn’t likely to go away.

“When it comes to fashion, we need to design products that can either go safely back into the
biosphere — meaning they would be compostable — or safely become technical nutrients, such as
polymers, metals and polyester, that can be recycled into new products,” said Lewis Perkins, senior
vice president of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute in San Francisco.

“We need to eliminate the concept of waste from our vocabulary and instead think of every
material as a potential nutrient for future products.”

Although biodegradability is a step in the right direction, Perkins said the more important
development in sustainability in fashion is using more technical fiber, such as polymers, that can
be recycled (or continuously used).

Fashions that readily decompose might be better-suited for the most disposable, least recyclable
items in a wardrobe — such as undergarments, swimsuits or so-called fast fashion, which is, by its
nature, cheap and disposable.

Almost 13 million tons of textile waste are generated annually, according to the EPA. Of that,
just 14 percent of the textiles used in clothing and footwear is recovered for reuse or recycling.
Statistics don’t exist for how much textile waste is composted. Still, more designers are seeing
its potential.